Glass Houses(110)

“And we have to presume she was dead,” Gregor said.

“Oh, definitely,” Rob said. “The times fit with what the medical examiner is telling us. Just about a year ago in late February. But here’s the thing. That lets Henry Tyder out completely, at least on this one.”

“Does it,” Gregor said.

“Yes, it does,” Rob said. “And I’ve double-checked this. During the week Beatrice Morgander disappeared, and the medical examiner thinks she probably died, Henry Tyder was in a sanatorium in Bedford Hills drying out for the three thousandth time. His sisters put him there after we released him, after we’d picked him up for the murder of Conchita Estevez.”

“Excellent,” Gregor said.

“I don’t think this is excellent,” the tall one said. “This is a mess. All these women murdered, and the prime suspect turns out to have a perfect alibi.”

“Maybe he snuck out,” the other one said. “A sanatorium isn’t maximum security.”

Gregor was tired of standing up. He gestured to the chair behind Rob’s desk, got the nod, and sat down. Then he pulled the piece of paper with the chart on it out of his pocket and put it down on his desk.

“Here it is,” he said. “Here’s what you actually have: Sarajean Petrazik, Conchita Estevez, Beatrice Morgander, Rondelle Johnson, Faith Anne Fugate, Elizabeth Bray, and Arlene Treshka.”

“About half the women,” Rob said. “A little more.”

“The women actually murdered by your serial killer,” Gregor said. “Elyse Martineau was murdered by Dennis Ledeski. Debbie Morelli is a possible for the serial killer list, but I doubt it. The timing isn’t right.”

“What’s timing got to do with it?” the tall one asked.

“Serial killers tend to strike in patterns,” Gregor said. “The almost universal pattern is for the murders to be widely spaced in the beginning, then to come at closer and closer intervals over time. That’s not always true, but I’ve never known a case where a serial killer sped up and then slowed down again unless there was an external reason for the slowdown—he ended up in prison for something else, for instance, or he had to go to the hospital—and there’s nothing like that here. So we’ll keep her off.”

“If Dennis Ledeski really did kill Elyse Martineau,” Rob said, “then did what’s his name, the guy we pulled in for Debbie Morelli—”

“Kill her?” Gregor said. “That would be Alexander Mark, the one who was working as Dennis Ledeski’s assistant in order to nail him. No. I think I can say confidently that Alexander might have murdered Ledeski if push came to shove, but he wouldn’t have murdered a middle-aged woman he barely knew. Part of your problem is the records. Marty and Cord were called in every time there was a suspicion that a case belonged to the Plate Glass Killer, and they don’t seem ever to have said no. The bigger the case, the more glory they stood to get from it, assuming they could ever get their partner to resign or die. You’re going to have to have somebody go through all these cases, one by one, and figure out just why each one was assigned to the Plate Glass Killer. Some of them are going to be so cold by now, I don’t know if you’ll ever straighten them out.”

“Okay,” Rob said. “I see that. But you don’t get it yet. Henry Tyder could not have killed Beatrice Morgander. We’re not talking about psychology either. He couldn’t have done it; he was locked up at the time. Henry Tyder isn’t the Plate Glass Killer.”

“You never thought he was,” Gregor said.

“No, I didn’t,” Rob said. “But that was before all this, and he bolted; and his sister seems to be missing in action with him. And if that isn’t indicative of guilt, I don’t know—”

The office door opened and the young woman from the anteroom stuck her head in.

“Mr. Benedetti?” she said. “There’s a call for Detectives O’Shea and Fabereaux. It’s something about a break-in.”





3


It was not that Gregor Demarkian was lost in Philadelphia. He had grown up in Philadelphia, and he’d been living here, since his formal retirement from the FBI, for nearly a decade. It was just that he had a terrible sense of direction, and that he tended not to remember places he was not going to on a regular basis. He would visit a part of the city that was new to him, it would become part of a case, and he would visit it over and over again. He would become familiar with it. Then the case would be over; he wouldn’t have to go back there again for months; he would forget all about it. When the time came to find it again, he would be lost.